


symbols in the sand

by scriveyner (trismegistus)



Series: Voltron Fic Collection [23]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (Why is it a surprise pairing? Because I don't know it yet either.), Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - The Mummy Fusion, M/M, Possible Shance, Possible Sheith, Retelling, Something's Not Right, Surprise Pairing, Voltron without Lions, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 07:50:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14996228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trismegistus/pseuds/scriveyner
Summary: "What's there, at Oriande?""A lot of sand, and a lot of death."





	symbols in the sand

There were worse things than waking up in a crowded, dirty prison cell. Shiro could name at least five, out of hand; although the thought didn’t make him feel any better as the elbow of another prisoner jabbed into the vicinity of his kidney. He managed to roll over, off his stomach, and kick a leg out at his attacker, warding the other man off. Shiro stared at him, dirty and rancid, as he scuttled back amidst the crush of prisoners and felt more than slightly out of sorts. The entire population of the cell was human - at least as far as he could tell, and for reasons he was entirely unsure that knowledge sat strange with him. As he stared about the glut of humanity another prisoner took the opportunity to relieve himself entirely too close to Shiro’s head, and he scrambled out of the way before climbing unsteadily to his feet.

That was when the hangover hit, and the cell spun around him.

Shiro staggered toward a wall that prisoners were crowded against and looked like they had no interest in moving any time soon. That was okay, when he vomited they moved quickly, scrambling to get out of the way as bile and the remnants of what felt like a week’s worth of drink made themselves known again. Shiro panted loudly, retching slightly still as he leaned, one arm against the wall and the other cover his mouth. His head was pounding like there was a bull elephant trapped in his skull and trying to break free, and there was a significant chance that he was going to vomit again, especially as the piquant bouquet of the cell’s inhabitants was beginning to make itself known.

As he recovered, still panting, a commotion near the front of the cell drew his attention. From the left two armed guards entered the cell, and Shiro watched them distractedly, more focused on keeping the contents of his stomach in place when he realized that they were making a beeline for him and holding shackles. The two men spoke in a foreign language that felt familiar, like he should understand them but he didn’t, and then one grabbed him firmly by the arm and yanked and Shiro’s first reaction was to immediately punch the man in return.

Hungover and dehydrated, that was perhaps a poor choice. When Shiro’s face was slammed against the bars of the cell hard enough to rattle him further he recognized that  _ maybe _ leading with his fists hadn’t been the best course of action, but at least he hadn’t made it easy on the guards shackling him.

“And here is your friend now,” spoke someone unfamiliar, his tone thickly accented and just out of Shiro’s line of sight. He squinted through the bars, his vision temporarily doubled, and he saw a lot of white. His eyes traveled up the cream-colored skirts and finally rested on darker skin, a familiar face pulled into an unfamiliar expression underneath a wide-brimmed sun hat.

“Princess Allura?” Shiro slurred, before he got his shackled hands around the bars and was able to push himself up. He sent a glare over his shoulder at the guard who prodded him with the butt of his bayonet, but his attention was drawn back out to the other side of the cell at a familiar burst of laughter.

“Princess? Oh please, don’t give her any ideas,” an equally-familiar older man in an ill-fitting cream-colored jacket said, and Shiro’s brain must  _ really _ be rattled because he knew this person too, although he was certain he’d never set eyes on either of them before in his life. “I wasn’t aware you were acquainted with my sister, Mr. Shirogane.”

Everything about the way this person spoke and held himself was wrong, sat wrong, and Shiro had the strangest memory of this person in a smoky dive bar that didn’t feel like  _ his _ memory. His memory contained a lot of … teal. Shiro squinted again and fought with dueling memories to try to identify him. “You look familiar,” he said, as the woman - Allura? Was that actually her name? - turned to the third member of their party, a rather portly and greasy-looking man in creased linen.

“May we have a few minutes with our friend?” she asked, her voice tight but pleasant.

The warden looked at the man in the cream coat suspiciously, but finally nodded at the lady in the sun hat. “You have five minutes,” he said, and left them.

“I know you,” Shiro said, address the man with the ginger mustache, but the woman stepped forward, discretely producing a small, weathered, golden box from her handbag.

“What can you tell us about this?” she asked, and Shiro stared at the box that she kept slightly concealed in her hands. Baffled, Shiro didn’t recognize the box - but he  _ did _ , and it produced a violent retch in his gut that he somehow managed to keep contained. The box was connected to sand and blood and death, and it looked so damn foreboding held cupped in the warm skin of the woman’s hands.

“Look, lady,” he said, and she stiffened slightly.

“That’s Miss Carnahan to you.”

He plowed on without being stopped, “I don’t know anything about that stupid thing.”

She turned toward her brother, tucking the trinket away. “Coran, you said this is the man you-” aware that her voice had raised she dropped it somewhat, “ _ stole _ it from.”

Coran. The name was familiar to Shiro and he wasn’t sure why. The same way that Allura’s name had resonated, but he was most certain now that he didn’t know either of them. “My dear sister,” Coran said, looking mildly panicked, and Shiro reckoned it was because pick-pocketing was intensely frowned upon in Cairo. “My friend here allowed me to borrow it, clearly recognizing the immense amount of trouble he was about to find himself in.”

“Immense amount of trouble,” Allura repeated, clearly not believing a word of it for a second. “I’ll wager you started that bar fight to get away with the map.” She turned back to Shiro and leaned in close to the bars, close enough that he realized the wisps of hair framing her face weren’t blonde but a white so fair it looked like it was spun from the clouds themselves. “There is a map in this trinket you …  _ loaned _ my brother, Mr. Shirogane, and I am quite curious how you came across such an interesting piece.”

It didn’t feel like him speaking, when the words escaped this time. “You’re talking about Oriande,” he said, and Coran sprung forward, hissing quiet. There was a guard still in the cell with Shiro, and while he might not speak the language they were using, that name would perk up any ears.

“And why would you feel I was speaking about a fabled lost city?” Allura said, and there was an undercurrent of smugness to her tone, like she had tricked something out of Shiro that he wasn’t going to willingly give.

“Maybe that’s where I was when I picked up that ‘trinket’,” Shiro said, and felt the memory of blood and sand surge. “That’s what you’re after, isn’t it?”

“You’ve been there?” Coran sounded incredulous. “He’s pulling our leg, Allura. He probably won that thing in a card game, or stole it, more likely.”

“What’s there, at Oriande?” Allura asked, and Shiro shook his head.

“A lot of sand, and a lot of death,” he said, certain that this was true. “They aren’t kidding when they say that place is cursed. You need to steer clear.” There was a familiar look of determination on Allura’s face, and he knew that steering clear was in fact the exact opposite of her plans. “But … if you need to find it, I might know a guy,” he said.

“Really?” She leaned forward again.

“Yeah.  _ Me. _ ” The guard behind him had clearly grown tired of their conversation, whatever the contents, and grabbed Shiro by the back of his roughspun tunic, but Shiro had a good grip on the bars of the cell. “Get me the hell out of here, and I’ll take you there!”

A second guard joined the first, and this one encouraged Shiro to release the bars of the cell by liberal application of the butt of his rifle to Shiro’s ribcage. He grunted in pain as the guards dragged him off, leaving the matched pair of siblings standing in front of the cell and exchanging a glance.

 

##

 

The guards did not return Shiro to the crowded holding cell where he had awoken. Shiro was half-dragged past jeering inmates and around through an arched doorway, into the blinding brilliance of the desert sun shining harshly down from a cloudless sky. He squinted, dazzled, as the noise level of the screaming prisoners rose slightly, and he realized that the guards had stopped a moment, giving him time to get his bearings. He was faced with a courtyard, squared off, and he could see the prisoners in this jail pressing their faces to the bars of various cells, trying to get a better look at the proceedings.

The thing that drew most of his attention, though, was the rickety gallows that sat centered in the courtyard.

This produced a visceral reaction as soon as he saw it. Shiro dug his heels into the dirt but the guards had him in too tight a grip to get free. The prisoners continued to heckle and jeer as he struggled, and then he heard Allura’s voice rise slightly about the crowd. “One hundred pounds!”

He looked involuntarily toward her voice and saw her seated on a balcony that overlooked the courtyard, beside the greasy form of the warden. She was turned toward the warden and not looking at him; but her brother stood slightly behind her and was staring at Shiro with some fragment of familiarity. Shiro couldn’t focus on that, though, as the guard shoved him toward the wooden stairs that would take him to his fate.

His hands and feet were both shackled and it was suicide, but so was mounting that set of stairs. So, Shiro did the first thing that came to mind when the guard brought the heel of his rifle to bear on Shiro again; he twisted, bringing the manacles up and catching the butt of the guard’s rifle in his chains and twisting them around it. This caught the man completely by surprise as Shiro yanked, pulling the weapon from the man’s grip and flinging it away.

The noise level of the prison rose immensely as the two guards rushed him, and several other guards started fighting their way through the crowd to get to the courtyard and help their brethren. Two at once Shiro could handle; or at least he felt he could, ducking under the first guard’s haymaker and surging into the second guard, shoulder-first, before the bayonet at the end of his rifle could be brought to bear. He didn’t get far as the second guard staggered back because the hangman joined the fracas, yanking Shiro by the back of his tunic hard enough to bring him down backward. He was off-balance enough that the hangman’s fist only glanced his head but he landed on his back against the stairs, the wind driven from him by their angle.

He thought he heard Allura’s voice again,  _ five hundred pounds! _ , but he couldn’t be certain what he was hearing over the ringing in his ears as the second guard slammed his rifle into Shiro’s solar plexus - before he could even catch his breath, he was wheezing for air a second time. The first guard drew a dagger from his belt, holding out his hand toward the second guard, and Shiro rolled… or at least,  _ tried _ to, but the hangman’s boot was on his shoulder.

The warden’s voice rang out, authoritative and sharp, in that same foreign language that most of the prison used. The first guard hesitated, his dagger still in hand as he argued back. The warden barked out something else and the guard snarled but tucked his weapon away, and Shiro tried again to get up but this time, the heel of the hangman’s boot found his face and that was the last thing he saw.   
  



End file.
